


How Guilt Can Kill You

by sparklydog



Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Death, Gen, Ghosts Maybe?, How Do I Tag, Mental Disorders maybe?, No Beta, One Shot, Original Fiction, Written for a Class, You decide really, light cursing, this is an original work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25314916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparklydog/pseuds/sparklydog
Summary: Anthony tries to come to terms with what he has done. William tries to "help" him come to terms and admit to what he has done. However, what is really going on in Anthony's head?
Relationships: None





	How Guilt Can Kill You

The young man tread lightly in the snow. This area was sacred. It was meant to be left undisturbed by anyone. His very presence disregarded this. This young man had light brown hair, almost to the point of being blonde, but too dark to be considered as such. He had pale skin, light enough to be deemed almost snowy. His blue eyes were dull and lifeless, as if some form of trauma had transpired and sucked the life from him. He wore a t-shirt, it appeared to have once been white, but was too stained with dirt and a dark brown substance to truly be able to discern what color it had actually been. There was also something that appeared to be a hole in the shirt, right over the heart from what could have been a knife wound. He wore ripped jeans, torn by trees and rocks. His feet were bare. There were dark bags under his eyes, as though he had gone through many sleepless nights.

This young man gazed up at the moon and the stars. His eyes closed and he sucked in a deep breath. Turning around, he looked at the snow where he had walked and saw nothing. The falling snow tickled his face, although he showed no reaction to the cold. He lifted his head to look further in the direction he had been heading. Beyond the trees, in a small clearing, he could see a young man standing in the dirt, his eyes closed as he also gazed at the moon. He slowly and quietly walked over to the man and peered at him. This young man appeared to look the same as himself, although he wore boots and his clothes were not as messy. The jeans were not ripped, the shirt was not dirty. The man standing in the dirt sucked in a breath and opened his eyes. They were brown and full of life. This man slowly turned to face him and looked right at the man with the dull blue eyes. They stared at one another in silence before the blue-eyed man spoke.

“Why?” he whispered, his voice barely a noise in the breeze. The brown-eyed man heard it though and tilted his head, as if in thought, before replying.

“You know why, everyone will know why.” He spoke, but with a more gruff voice. The blue-eyed man’s face twisted into an almost snarl.

“I wouldn’t have asked if I knew,” he snapped. The brown-eyed man seemed taken aback.

“All those wins, all of that money, and for what? You end up destroying the only family you have left. You turned us down, Anthony. You left us to fend for ourselves,” The blue-eyed man continued. The brown-eyed man, Anthony, pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. 

“I never left Ma to fend for herself, I never turned you down, you weren’t in your right state of mind, William,” he spoke. 

“You don’t get to call me that!” William replied, his shout echoing through the woods. A few birds took to flight, startled by the sudden loud noise. 

“Do you have any idea what I’ve been through?! Any idea what Ma had to do to keep me from going after your traitorous ass?!” He continued shouting, his arms flailing to emphasize his anger and frustration. Anthony sighed, his breath visible for a moment before dissipating into the surrounding air. He turned away from William, crossed his arms behind his back and started walking, his boots crunching through the snow. William hurried to follow, but no sound came from his footsteps, no marks remained as he moved. Anthony passed a few stones, perfectly rounded on the top, straight edges on the sides, most engraved with more than simply names. He stopped at one and crouched down to read it.

“Rose Harvey, 1918 to 1984. Beloved mother, even more beloved daughter.” He read aloud. William hesitated and then slowly bent down, putting one arm on Anthony’s shoulder and the other around the tombstone where they were crouched. He turned his gaze from the stone to Anthony and saw that the man was crying, his tears freezing before they could drip off his cheek. 

“I didn’t mean to,” Anthony whispered desperately, as if trying to convince himself of the fact as well. 

“I didn’t think that any of this would happen,” he said, voice cracking towards a sob. William remained silent, letting the other man speak and cry. Anthony suddenly launched himself at the tombstone, wrapping his arms around it as he sobbed uncontrollably harder. William took his arms off of the other man and the tombstone. 

“You are going to have to live with the consequences now. This is a result of your choice. You turned your back on us the second your greed took hold and you have no idea what our family went through. She cried every day,” William said. “But we still cared. Despite it all. We. Cared.” Anthony made no move to show that he had heard William, but William knew that he had heard him. 

As the moon reached its full height in the darkened sky, the snow started to come down harder. William stared at Anthony, who made no attempt to move despite the increasingly worsening conditions. However, William made no motion to warn Anthony of the escalating weather. After a few more moments, a small blanket of snow had formed on Anthony and this finally prompted him to move. He stood up and turned to face the crouched-down William, his eyes following as he too stood up. The small snow blanket that had formed on Anthony’s back fell as he stood up, creating a small mound beneath him. No snow stuck to William. 

“I’m sorry,” Anthony sniffled. He reached out to touch William, but his hand passed right through. 

“Apparently not sorry enough,” William murmured. 

“If you were truly sorry, you would tell them how it really happened. You would tell them how she died.” Anthony backed up. 

“You know I can’t. It would ruin me,” he said. William shook his head in disappointment and clasped his hands behind his back. 

“Yet after everything you have caused and everything you have done here tonight, you still won’t admit your guilt?” He tsked. 

“I don’t know why I expected better from you,” he said and turned. He started walking in the opposite direction, back towards the trees. He made no motion to see if Anthony was following him. Indeed, Anthony was not following William. He stood there, as still as a statue as William walked away from the grave, away from their mother. He turned once again to look at the grave and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

“Alright, let’s start from the beginning then,” the police officer said, clicking a pen. Anthony sat across from him, hands clasped on the table as he watched the officer. 

“You say that you were at home when you got the call from a man named William-” Anthony cut him off to add his own information.

“Yes, William, my fraternal brother. We have different eyes.” The officer raised an eyebrow at him before continuing. 

“So you say that William, your brother, called you to inform you that your mother had just died in a house fire?” 

Anthony nodded, “Yes, sir. That’s correct.” The officer jotted down a few notes on the notepad he was carrying in his other hand. The officer sighed in annoyance before placing both the pen and notepad down on the table. 

“Look, Anthony, I would love to believe you. Really, I would. There’s just three problems with your story. The first one is that your mother was found with a stab wound in the heart after the fire. The second one is that your wife said you weren’t at home. Lastly is that your brother died at birth,” He said. 

“Now, I am going to ask you one more time. What actually happened in your mother’s house before the fire?” Anthony was sweating, his hands were twitching and he was rubbing his thumb over his palm. 

“I don’t know what you mean. William and I have always been close and I was miles away from her house at the time,” he said quietly. The officer dragged his hands down his face in frustration. 

“Look, Anthony, your brother was stillborn. He could not have possibly been the one to call you. Not to mention the fact that we have evidence that you were not home when you said you were.” Anthony glanced past the officer at the one-way mirror that faced them. In that reflection, he saw a young man, with light brown hair and dull blue eyes. The man was glaring at him and had his hands clasped behind him. The man in the reflection looked at the officer then back at Anthony. 

Anthony began to sweat even more profusely, “I really don’t know what happened.” He said without taking his eyes off the man in the reflection. The man’s face twisted into a snarl, his eyes flaring with anger. 

“You’ll regret that,” the reflection mouthed before vanishing. Anthony turned back to the officer who sighed. 

“Alright, you can go then. We have nothing that we can pin on you, yet.”

The next day, Anthony was relaxing in his kitchen before work. He scrolled through his phone, checking his emails and looking through news headlines. His wife had left the house the day before after he had been brought to the police station for questioning. He once again opened his messaging app, sighing in annoyance and frustration at the lack of response to his desperate attempts to contact her. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of something black. His breath caught in his throat as he turned to look at what had caught his eye. Nothing was there, so he turned back to look at his phone, his heart beating rapidly. 

“You didn’t tell the truth”, a voice he knew all too well snarled into his ear. He whipped around to confront William, but there was nothing there when he turned. His heart was practically beating out of his chest, his breath coming in rapid small breaths. His thumb hovered over his emergency 911 button as he looked around for the one who he knew was here. He slowly got up and walked to the knife block, grabbing a small one used for trimming meat. The weight of the knife felt familiar in his hand and he flinched at the still-recent memory.

“You lied!” The voice screamed into his ear, causing his ear drums to start ringing from the volume. He swung the knife in the direction of the voice with one hand and hit the emergency call button with the other. The knife met open air. He held the phone up to his ear.

“911 What’s your emergency?” Spoke from the other end of the line. He didn’t respond, staring in horror at who stood in front of him. William stood mere feet from him, a nasty snarl on his face.

“Hello? Sir, I hear your rapid breathing, do you need medical attention?” Came from the phone line again. William continued to stare at him, his dull eyes practically flaring.

“I’ll show you I'm not crazy! I know you’re real!” He screamed and lifted the phone, snapping a picture of the man right in front of him. William lunged at him, wrestling the knife from his grasp and knocking him onto the floor, the phone sliding away on the tile floor. William leaned over him.

“I’m only as real as you think I am” he whispered into his ear. He thrust the knife into Anthony’s heart, knowing exactly where to aim. Anthony died immediately.

Later, when the police would conduct their formal investigation, they would find the phone with the picture on it. Only, the picture was simply a picture of the kitchen, there was no living being in the picture. The knife only held Anthony’s finger-prints.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a simple, around 2,000 word story written for my Elements of Non-Fiction class. I never really decided if Anthony was insane or if he was actually killed by a ghost. I will leave it up to the reader to decide. Please feel free to kudos, comment, and bookmark to your heart's content. I appreciate both criticism and encouragements. I could even post the short exercises (like less than 1,000 words) if people wanted.


End file.
